It’s taken me longer than I expected to be able to update you on the party we had for my best friend’s 40th birthday last weekend. That’s her up there in the silly glasses. We’ve been friends since we were 11 years old; that makes 29 years together. I can honestly say that Nancy is my best friend because she never let me go, in spite of my wanderlust, my frequent poor choice in men (except for the latest one, of course) and my often tactless frankness. She is one to hang onto her friends, even the ones who take more than they give - not that that would be me, but you know what I mean, those other people.

Nancy is a lapsed vegan, she now eats fish, seafood, dairy and eggs; she’ll also have a taste of your roast duck, sausage or beef stew if you offer it to her and she even called me once to say that she had succumbed to an overwhelming lust for a hamburger and felt the need to confess (I absolved her). Because of this and the fact that other of our friends have this or that dietary restriction and because some of Nancy’s family would be in attendance and I knew they wouldn’t all want the Asian inspired wasabi infused fish extravaganza (with sake martinis) that we were dreaming of, I settled on tapas. You see, the food in Spain is really not very spicy or exotic, has a lot of variety and once you take out the part where they have you add bits of ham to everything (because of the Inquisition, you must eat pork people or else), it can be offered in vegetarian or even vegan versions.

After the almonds, olives, chorizo, manchego with membrillo, jamón Serrano, crudités with vegan roasted red pepper dip and pan con tomate (bread with tomato, garlic, olive oil and salt, do you need a recipe for that?), we had tapas passed on trays: gazpacho shooters, garbanzo cakes with a sauce of red pepper spiked with pimentón, puff pastry bites with picón (a Spanish blue cheese), pear slices and an apricot glaze and finally, one of my favorite things of all time, empanada with tuna, green olives, pimentón. For the main courses, we had roast pork, grilled tofu and vegetables and seafood paella (I had wanted to make Mark Bittman’s tomato paella, but because my husband lived in Barcelona for a while, he put the ixnay on that one and made it his way on the grill, no recipe (sorry, I’ll work on it). For dessert, we had an assortment of cookies, lime ice cream, coconut chocolate gelato with ras el hanout and toasted coconut and an orange buttermilk cake with orange flavored buttercream frosting (buttercream is one word right? Word doesn’t seem to think so and has it underlined in red).

I had a lot of fun working with Nancy’s family, especially mom Judy and her sisters Mary Beth and Lorie, and her friend Michaela on the party. Michaela does catering professionally and we barely had to do more than nod our heads a couple of times over ideas, the rest of it came together seamlessly. I did the food, she did the set-up, bar and service (and far too much of the clean up, I think, sorry!). The problem with all of this is that I don’t have a lot of recipes, my batteries conked out, but Nancy’s sister-in-law took some pictures that she put on Kodak Gallery, but that site wasn’t working too well this week and there aren’t many really good pictures of the food. I think the biggest hits for me were the vegan chocolate balsamic cookies and the gelato, which I made by churning Heidi’s coconut chocolate pudding in my ice cream maker. I also used my own ras el hanout mixture. Both of these recipes are available by clicking on them. I’m thinking that our friend Karin will want those two, she’s the vegan I was trying to make sure was well-fed in all of this, we haven’t seen each other in a long time and our friendship has had a long hiatus (mea culpa). I hope she saw my effort as the peace offering it was meant to be.

P.S. We’re finally moved into our new house, but for now the kitchen is without a stove. I’ll update you soon and get a jump start to posting more frequently again.

We have a winner for our name that ingredient contest. Congratulations Aaron, you correctly identified my brother’s harvest of hops. I’ll send you a jar of La Salmandra dulce de leche, some Fran’s smoked salt caramels from Zingerman’s and a jar of my own mix of ras el hanout – this is a North African spice mix, the term means top of the shop in Arabic, it’s a combination of the best spices a shopkeeper would have available. Just get in touch with me and let me know what your address is and I’ll get your package in the mail. Ken will use the hops later this year to make beer. Hopefully, he’ll let me help him and I can document it for you.

Today we’re putting on a party for my best friend, Nancy. What was going to be 30-40 people has morphed into 60-70. Luckily the plan for tapas and other Spanish food is easily expandable to feed more people. Here’s the menu.

I’ll give you the lowdown and some of the recipes from the party in the next few days. For now, here’s my recipe for ras el hanout. Heidi calls for it in her recipe for coconut chocolate pudding. One of the desserts for the party is this pudding recipe turned into gelato by running it through an ice cream maker. The pudding is brilliant. I’ll let you know how they like the gelato.

ras el hanout (adapted from chow)

• 1 T ground allspice
• 1 T ground white pepper
• 1 T ground mace
• 1 T ground cardamom seeds (removed from their pods)
• 1 T turmeric
• 1 t crushed saffron
• 2 T ground cinnamon
• 1 T nutmeg
• 1 T ground ginger

Put all spices in a dry skillet over medium heat, shake gently from time to time until slightly browned and fragrant. Let cool and place in a jar with a tight fitting lid. Keeps for up to 12 months.

My brother, Ken (of the excellent salsa and remarkable margaritas), grows this in his backyard. No, it’s not what you’re thinking. He grows other things, too, including a wide variety of herbs like coriander (first the herb, then he lets it go to seed and harvests those, brilliant, right?) and pears and crab apples and loads of other fun things. I happened to be at his place the other day to drop off Jessica’s tooth fairy bag. She had left it at Nancy’s lake house (it somehow had more money in it than when she lost it, go figure). Of course I was smart and timed this visit for 6 o’clock when I knew that he’d offer us something to eat and drink.

When we arrived, he was harvesting this from his garden. It grows on a vine and you need to dry it before using it (that’s the drying rack you see below, next to my feet). The first person to correctly guess what it is will receive a package of edibles from yours truly. There is no purchase necessary, feel free to guess more than once, you must be 18 to enter, and please no family members or close friends of ceres and bacchus.

Two things. First, we had sandwich #5 at Zingerman’s and we didn’t like it that much. Shocking, right? This one is called Rodger’s Big Picnic. Here’s the description: oven-roasted asparagus, grilled portabella mushrooms, cheddar & Dijon mustard on grilled farm bread. Erik thought that it would taste better with a slice of ham or something like that, and not just because he’s a meat eater. I though that the cheddar and mustard didn’t really go with the vegetables. We both agreed that to make it better and keep it vegetarian, the thing to do would be to replace the cheddar with some goat cheese and lose the mustard altogether. To be fair, there was nothing wrong with any of the individual parts. I really did like the mushrooms and loved the asparagus, especially the little tips that stuck out of the edge of the bread.

We did find the place upstairs at Zingerman’s Next Door (the café part of the operation) that has a lot of the sandwiches described and annotated, like this one. They also have the retired ones. Now I can stop waiting for that list.

The second item on the agenda today is a little bit of whining. We haven’t been able to move into our new house because the people renting it have decided they don’t want to leave yet. Lawyers and judges are getting involved. We’ve had to leave the lovely apartment near Zingerman’s that we stayed in all summer because Jeremy is back from his archeological dig in Bolivia and he needed it back (thanks again for everything Jeremy!). For now we are staying in a temporary place. It’s in an apartment complex that was built in the 70s. The walls are paper thin, the carpet has definitely seen better days and the kitchen, people, is hideous. I had to spend two hours cleaning before I could even consider putting any of my stuff in there. The first time I turned on a burner on the stove, the flames licked half way up my enamelware pot. I’m afraid to try the oven. Plus, there’s no table or chairs. That’s right, we are reduced to eating at the coffee table for the next who knows how long. I feel like I’m living someone else’s life.

Not much cooking has been going on over here, let me tell you. I had a couple of fried eggs and some sliced tomato for lunch yesterday. We’ve been eating a lot of quesadillas. Last night, I cooked what I would consider the first real meal I’ve made here; chana masala and rice with peas, but I didn’t make all of the other accoutrements that we usually have with Indian food. No naan, no chutney, no side dish of muglai saag. Erik missed the raita the most. Note to self: do not make anything remotely resembling Indian food ever again unless there is yogurt on hand or the boy will be very unhappy.

We went to the one brother’s house a couple of times, and then to the other brother’s house. I called my sister-in-law Sara today and said, "Um, if you guys aren’t busy tonight, can I come over and cook dinner at your house?" I’m really happy she didn’t say no, because I have these rancho gordo santa maria pinquito beans that I’m really wanting to cook with some pork neck bones and sofrito.

One more thing, we don’t have internet here, in spite of waiting around all day today for the Comcast people, so the posts might get a little few and far between in the next couple of weeks. I’ll try not to let too many days go by. I do have a few recipes to share and I will be thinkin’ about you all.